Funnily enough, tropical Africa resisted conquest and occupation by Europeans with superior technology for 400 years, because the Africans had developed resistance to diseases which slaughtered any Europeans who tried to settle there. In other words, although I realise you were trying to discredit Diamond's work by mocking him, you've actually proved him right.
It was only the invention of modern medicine, vaccines, and anti-malaria prophylaxis by the Victorians after 1850 or so that allowed Europeans to colonise tropical Africa.
That was as much to do with climate and the axis of the earth than on hills, rivers and mountains.
Complete nonsense pretty much.
The other major civilizations in the world, such as the Ottoman Turks, Mughal India, Tokugawa Japan, Muscovite Russia, and the Incan and Aztec Empires in the Western Hemisphere, told a similar story of being populous, wealthy (except for Russia), and highly centralized under strong autocratic rulers.
Tokugawa Japan and the Aztec were centralised under autocratic rulers? The writer clearly had no idea what he was talking about. The Tokugawa were centralised only that they had a capital and weren't in a civil war anymore, the Aztec were city states with a web of alliances and vassalage, not centralised at all. The Mughals relied heavily on vassal princes too.
Those civilisations are also all incredibly short lived and rose to power in this period. England and France were much more established and developed states, excepting China and Persia they may actually have had the most time to develop. The Empires the Aztec, Inca, Ottomans and Mughals established had an arguably much greater rate of expansion in this period and started out with even less.
In fact, it was Western Europe's lack of autocratic rulers, such as these other cultures had, which would be the key to its leaping ahead of the pack.
France and Spain cover a lot of western Europe and were more autocratic than most of the cultures the writer mentions.
For, while the absolute rulers outside of Europe tended to exploit and suppress their middle class and, in the process, stifle inventiveness and initiative, the spirit of free enterprise and inventiveness had much more free rein in Western Europe. That freedom created a powerful dynamic that allowed Europeans to forge ahead with new ideas, business techniques, and technologies that would shape the modern world. And if freedom was the key to Europe's success, geography was much of its underlying basis.
This is basically 'the myth of western freedom vs eastern tyranny' inspired by Herodotus. Its not historic or scientific in any way what so ever.
Poland-Lithuania had more freedom than any country in Western Europe and it just stagnated.
Free enterprise requires property laws, eg
centralisation and strong authority. 'Freedom' is too vague a word to explain anything. Libertarian Capitalists believe that freedom comes from not being interfered with by government, Communists believe freedom comes from having equally distributed wealth, the Greek and Italian city states believed freedom was the ability of the state to govern itself. Freedom means whatever you want it to. Its not word you can just throw about in this kind of discourse because at its heart, it doesn't have any meaning without context.
There were two main geographic factors that would help lead to Western Europe's later dominance. First of all, Western Europe was broken up by mountains, forests, and bodies of water: the Alps and Pyrenees cutting Italy, Spain, and Portugal off from northern Europe; the English Channel cutting England off from the continent; and the Baltic Sea separating Scandinavia from the rest of Europe in the south.
This is nonsense. Bodies of water are not barriers. They are means of transport. England was not cut off from the continent. Hence the Vikings, the Normans, the House of Anjou, many of the Gallic tribes mention by Julius Caesar, all had land in both Britain and the mainland.
The Pyrenees could be a barrier, but they were never really a barrier to states. The basques/gascognes and the occitans/catalans had cultural and often political influence at the edges of the mountains. The Pyrenees were a barrier to states not on the edges, but these never had dominance anyway and were usually subsumed into those that did control the edges.
The Alps were also easy for conquerors to simply go round.
This broke Western Europe into a large number of independent states that no one ruler had the power and resources to conquer and hold.
India had tons of independent states too. Western Europe didn't start to gain prominence until Spain and Britain were united, France became centralised and the disunited Germany and Italy never really did anything colonial.
Second, Western Europe had a wide diversity of climates, resources, and waterways which promoted a large number of separate economies, but which were linked together for trade by the extensive coastlines and river systems covering the region.
So now he notices that waterways and coastlines are links not barriers.
Western Europe does not had a wide diversity of climates. It has the Mediterranean and the colder north. Compared to the Andes that's a pitiable amount of climatic diversity. If Europe's resources were that awesome they wouldn't have been so driven to trade with China and India in the first place, therefore no global Empires.
Therefore, just as no one power could control all of Europe politically, no one power could monopolize one vital aspect of its economy. Thus Europe was characterized by what we call political and economic pluralism, which also reinforced each other.
This argument requires him to completely ignore and generalise the west of the world while explaining Europe and then claim that he's shown how unique Europe was when actually he's done no actual comparative work. Europe was no more politically diverse than the rest of the world except within the HRE, which was more a case of the central authority being so weak that any petty land owner could be mistaken for an independent state.
The only area on the entire planet where a single regime dominated a large area was China, a nation that Europe could defeat in naval trade wars but never managed to conquer. China also frequently suffered from break away regions, revolts and civil war so wasn't actually all that united anyway. In Indonesia, India, the Americas, the central asian and Siberian steppes, the areas Europe actually made their global Empires, there were tons of political divisions, tribalism and small states to which the five colonial powers of Britain, Spain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands made a relatively united front.
Political and economic pluralism also combined to promote the rise of a prosperous and innovative middle class that could create and spread new ideas, business techniques, and technology if the local rulers would allow it. If they did not allow it, there was always the option of moving to another state that did give them the freedom to pursue their interests. The results of such moves, such as when the French Protestant Huguenots left France en masse to avoid Louis XIV's religious persecution in 1685, were to deprive the economies of the persecuting nations of some of their wealthiest and most innovative people while boosting the economies of the countries that took these immigrants in. As a result, the balance of power would constantly shift away from powerful and repressive states and in favor of the more progressive and free thinking ones, thus reinforcing political pluralism in Western Europe.
Oh, so France became weak because of its oppressive regime while Prussia conquered a global Empire with the help of all those Protestant French refugees it let in. Oh wait.
These three factors converged to help Western Europe establish large overseas colonial empires which were conquered by Europe's small but well armed and disciplined armies and navies and held under control by powerful European fortresses. As time and Western Europe's technology progressed, European armies would show an amazing ability to defeat non-European armies many times their size with astounding regularity, each time increasing and strengthening their hold on their overseas colonies.
I'm not an expert on Spanish America but how many fortresses did they have there? Europe's over seas Empires weren't conquered by small disciplined armies defeating larger native ones, they were created by Europeans taking advantage of the
political divisions outside of Europe to ally with the natives, divide and conquer. This is obvious from any actual reading of the narratives of the European conquests. The idea that European armies were invincible is a myth created by those who can't be bothered to actually look at facts.
Europe's large colonial empires brought an influx of money and resources into Europe. This fed back into Europe's economic and political pluralism, especially after 1600 when smaller states such as England and the Dutch Republic were taking their share of overseas trade and colonies, thus starting the cycle all over again. These colonial empires also made Western Europe the center of a world economy, providing it with the money and resources needed for the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700's. It is no accident that the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain, which also happened to be the foremost colonial power of its day.
Thanks to this cycle, Europe and European derived cultures (e.g., the United States, Canada, and Australia) were able to control 85% of the globe by 1900. Since then, Europe has lost its colonial empire, thanks primarily to two highly destructive world wars, but not before it could spread its ideas and technology across the globe where they have taken firm root.
This is partially correct, but now he's talking about the result of an already established colonial Empire, he's still failed to talk about the causes that stimulated the beginnings of those Empires, which was largely a desire to trade with China.
'smaller states such as England'? Great Britain and Ireland isn't exactly small. Not compared to the Indian states they were conquering and making alliances with.
Second link from that same site:
Kings also opposed the nobles and the Church, so the middle class townsmen provided them with valuable allies and money. With this money, kings could buy two things. First of all, they could raise mercenary armies armed with guns to limit the power of the nobles. Secondly, they could form professional bureaucracies staffed largely by their middle class allies who were both more efficient since they were literate and more loyal since they were the king's natural allies and dependant on him for their positions. As a result, kings in Western Europe were able to build strong centralized nation-states by the 1600's.
Is the writer for this one different? He's completely changed his tune, now he's admitting that Western Europe contained strong centralised nation states. But not he's not talking about those terrible Aztec and Tokugawa autocrats so he doesn't need to reinforce that ridiculous comparison.
However, the critical difference between Eastern and Western Europe has to do with waterways. Western Europe has an abundance of navigable rivers, coastlines, and harbors along the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, North, and Baltic Seas. In the High Middle Ages, these fostered the revival of trade and the rise of towns, a money economy, and a middle class opposed to the feudal structure dominated by the nobles and Church.
The Balkans lack water ways except for the Danube which is on the periphery of the Balkans anyway. Saying the Ukraine and Russia do is nonsense and putting the Baltic in Western Europe is just cherry picking.
Factors limiting trade also limited the growth of a strong middle class in Eastern Europe. This meant that kings had little in the way of money or allies to help them against the nobles. That in turn meant that peasants had few towns where they could escape the oppression of the nobles. Therefore, strong nobilities plus weak, and oftentimes elective, monarchies were the rule in Eastern Europe before 1600. At the same time, the nobles ruled over peasants whose status actually was sliding deeper into serfdom rather than emerging from it.
This is partially True, but Poland-Lithuania got around this by encouraging German and Jewish immigrants that gave a strong middle class.
However, there was one geographic factor that favored Eastern Europe's rulers after 1600. That was the fact that Eastern Europe is next to Western Europe. As a result, some influence from the West was able to filter in to the East. In particular, Eastern European rulers would emulate their Western counterparts by adopting firearms, mercenary armies, and professional bureaucracies. As a result, they were able to build strongly centralized states in the 1600's and 1700's. This was especially true in three states: Austria-Hungary (the Hapsburg Empire), Brandenburg-Prussia in Germany, and Russia.
There are elements of truth sure, but is funny how he claims that the east had to steal firearms from the west when the Czech Hussites were way ahead of France in adopting such things. Mercenaries were going out of fashion when the Prussians built their professional army.
Eastern Europe, in stark contrast to Western Europe, provided practically a mirror image of its historical development before 1600. Being further inland compared to Western Europe hurt Eastern Europe's trade, since the sea and river waterways vital to trade did not exist there in such abundance as they did in Western Europe.
Western Europe's trade superiority had nothing to do with the geography
within western Europe, it was entirely to do with its ability to exploit the Atlantic Ocean. Eastern Europe actually had the trade advantage with Asia. It was only the political divisions that cut off Egypt and the Silk road that led to the decline of eastern trade, which had always been superior in the middle ages.
However, the lower incidence of towns and a strong middle class has continued to hamper the development of Eastern European states in the modern era, since rulers there have had to build their states with less of the strong foundation of a money based economy, basing their states on less developed agricultural economies. While the strong middle class in Western Europe would provide the impetus for further developments in the West, notably the emergence of democracy and the Industrial Revolution, these two things have had a harder time taking root in Eastern Europe, making its overall political and economic development more difficult.
Once again, his conclusion is more or less based on fact but doesn't flow that well from his earlier article. In general this one wasn't so bad.
Even Mr Diamond gave it a 
